The model of library liaisons dedicated to serving particular disciplines and cohorts is regularly mentioned by our campus partners as effective and valuable. While the potential of the library liaisons is clear, a re-conceptualization of the model is underway at Berkeley, as it is in most of our organizations. Integrating the Liaison into the Curriculum At Berkeley, library liaisons are assigned to each academic program and department and the Berkeley Library culture traditionally mirrored the faculty culture with its emphasis on subject specialization. This emphasis was reshaped several years ago when we extended the library liaison model to include academic support units (i.e. Academic Achievement Programs, Centers for Transfer, Re-entry and Student Parents Educational Technology Services Graduate Student Instructor Teaching and Resource Center Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program). Further shifts in thinking about the librarian role in education arose from a six-year initiative focused on enhancing undergraduate education and supporting a community of faculty dedicated to teaching and learning.3 Our experience with the Mellon Library/Faculty Fellowship for Undergraduate Research initiative— funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation with co-principal investigators from the University Library and Vice Provost’s Office—gave the Library increased insight about challenges, opportunities, and value of richer instructional partnerships. The initiative provided library staff with the opportunity to elevate their role in contributing to the campus’ teaching mission. Supporting individual faculty selected for the program each year, library liaisons were part of Implementation Teams with an educational technologist, a pedagogical specialist from the Graduate Student Instructor Teaching & Resource Center, and an assessment specialist. Throughout the year the librarians honed their skills for collaboration and project management, and were pushed into less familiar instructional terrain, analyzing draft assignments and recommending alternatives that would more effectively benefit student learning in the process of research rather than simply focusing on differences between sources and the mechanics of searching various databases. RLI 265 10 Amplifying the Educational Role of Librarians ( C O N T I N U E D ) AUGUST 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC I can attest to the crucial role of librarians with professional backgrounds and expertise related to assessment, instructional design, learning outcomes, and pedagogy as applied in traditional and e-learning environments.
Previous Page Next Page